15.4.16

STAIRWAY TO THE HIGH COURT

Like a nasty dose of some STD that simply won’t go away, the issue of whether
or not Jimmy Page and, to a lesser extent, Robert Plant, nicked the opening
bars of ‘Stairway To Heaven’ from an instrumental by Spirit entitled ‘Taurus’
grabbed many column inches earlier this week, causing Just Backdated to listen
very carefully to the music in question. ‘Stairway’ is credited to both Page
and Plant but it’s a safe bet to assume that Page wrote the melody and Plant
the lyrics, so if culpability becomes an issue then it is Jimmy who is in the
frame.

We are concerned with
just the introduction to ‘Stairway’, no more and no less, and those in Spirit’s
camp will argue that this is its key element, four crucial notes that are
nowadays as well known to rock fans as any Chuck Berry intro that took the
fancy of Keith Richards. ‘Taurus’ does not open with this melody but reaches it
at around the 45 second mark, but apart from this similarity each song thereafter
does its own thing, ‘Stairway’ reaching for the heavens as it inflates and
develops, ‘Taurus’ noodling along at the same pace throughout, enhanced by
strings as it reaches its conclusion but never really working up much of a
sweat.

Both songs hover around
an A-minor key. The descending sequence of notes on the D-string are identical,
no doubt about it. The tempo or meter, too, is identical, ditto the general,
slightly medieval feel which is Zep’s case is enhanced by John Paul Jones
playing a bass recorder. ‘Stairway’, however, has a simultaneous ascending run
of notes on the top E-string and the phrases in each song are resolved
differently. ‘Taurus’ seems to hang loosely, while ‘Stairway’ moves down to a D
chord, then a slightly discordant F-major 7th, then a G major and an A minor chord,
a far more satisfactory and pleasing sequence to my mind. In ‘Taurus’ the
tranquil little sequence is repeated several times with pretty much the same feel and intensity
while in ‘Stairway’ Jimmy pushes down on the power button as each verse comes
around, thus disguising and diminishing the similarity.

‘Taurus’ first appeared
on Spirit’s debut album released in 1968, a full three years before Led
Zeppelin IV, on
which ‘Stairway’ appeared. That Spirit debut album also included the song
‘Fresh Garbage’ which Led Zeppelin covered at the beginning of their career,
which proves that Jimmy Page was aware of the album. Also, in those early days
before Zep established themselves as a top flight attraction, they were on the
same bill as Spirit; among the dates they shared Zep’s first ever appearance in
America, at Denver on December 26, 1968. They also appeared together at two
festivals in 1969, at Atlanta on July 5 and Seattle on July 27, but I have no
way of knowing whether Spirit included ‘Taurus’ in their sets; probably
unlikely as meandering instrumentals are hardly festival fare.

The lawsuit has been
brought by the Estate of Randy California (whose real name was Randy Wolfe),
Spirit’s leading light and songwriter, who died in a drowning accident in January 1997,
rescuing his 12-year-old son in the process.

The big question, of
course, is why it has taken so long – over 40 years – for the Estate to bring
the case. Surely Randy, when he was alive, was aware of the similarities between
the two songs and, had he felt sufficiently aggrieved, would have brought the case himself.
‘Stairway To Heaven’ will have generated a tidy sum in royalties but far be it
for me to suggest that in the present era, when litigation has become a nice
little earner, pecuniary motives are at the heart of this. Many plaintiffs
bring a case in the hope that a quick out-of-court settlement will resolve an
issue and save high legal costs but Jimmy Page has a deep pocket and I don’t
see him capitulating easily.

It’s worth pointing out,
too, that descending chord sequences in a minor key such as this are as common
as muck. Zep used something similar in ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’, which isn’t
that different from George Harrison’s ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ on The
Beatles’ White Album. Jack Bruce once told me that JS Bach was the master of the
descending bass line and, were he alive today, might have a case against loads
of rock songwriters, not just Procol Harum. On the negative side, it’s also
worth adding that Led Zep have a bit of previous in this regard too: ‘Whole
Lotta Love’ = ‘You Need Love’ (Muddy Waters); ‘The Lemon Song’ = ‘Killing
Floor’ (Chester Burnett); ‘When The Levee Breaks’ = Memphis Minnie; and a hush
seems to have settled over ‘Dazed And Confused’ which songwriter Jake Holmes
claims to have written (another descending sequence of notes) and which it is believed was the subject of an
out-of-court settlement in 2011.

I wouldn’t like to
predict the outcome of the ‘Stairway’ issue but if I was on the bench I’d award
a small settlement to the Randy California Estate, perhaps 5% or less of the
money the song has generated. This judgement is based on the fact that only 50%
of the song is the melody (and 50% the lyrics, which is not the issue), and of
that 50% only 10% – at the most – can be attributed to ‘Taurus’, the remaining
90% – not least the entire second half of the song after John Bonham comes
tumbling in – pure Page/Led Zep.

4 comments:

It's Led Zeppelin IV (or Zoso or Runes or whatever) but not VI. Also I wonder if some basis of the lawsuit comes from Page's reputation (whether deserved or not I cannot say) as someone who Takes Credit Where Credit Isn't Due. This came up in Julian Dawson's Nicky Hopkins bio (p. 62): "If indeed this was Nicky's first proper session, it was an early lesson in the dubious morals of the record industry. The various blues jams recorded that day were sold to Immediate Records and have since been issued half a dozen times or more, under a variety of headings, but always with Jimmy Page's name entered as the author of the songs - even on Nicky's feature number 'Piano Boogie,' an action even Nicky later described as 'a bit rank.' Years later, Carlo was to take him to court to challenge the songwriting credits. Page, by then a multi-millonaire, took full advantage of his superior financial and legal power to defend his claims to the hilt, ceding neither credit nor a penny of royalties to the hapless musicians."